Neon White - Speedy Anime

Creating something new from scratch is always a big risk. It is especially risky to create something new for a knowingly narrowed audience. Well, when something new word in the genre comes out of the mouth of a newbie developer, it's like going to the casino. And the gambling daredevils in gamedev turned out to be Angel Matrix. About Neon White is easy to make a preliminary impression with a spindle of associations. Imagine that you connect to the serf-server in CS:GO, but before that game for some reason uploaded two gigabytes of user-generated content. Upon entering the server, you find that some modder has replaced the usual modeling terrorists angular devils, and the knife in the hands of the protagonist is not. In between levels you are shown a visual novel with a hackneyed plot for some reason. The first thought at the sight of such folk art - rejection. However, with each level you are getting more and more deeply imbued with the creator's idea. If initially the server seemed to you the handiwork of an anime schoolboy, over time you notice that this "schoolboy" was able to logically justify the high-speed rides on the cliff ledges and even tell a good story...

...And that's what Neon White is all about - destroying skepticism about yourself.

The storyline is really Japanese.

The plot of Neon White gathered almost all the attributes of a trashy anime: serious claims to a deep plot, the author touches on philosophical themes - yes; clumsy kun in the title role - yes; the promotion of moral values - yes; and even an unexpected ending with an explicit message - yes!

The protagonist is a nameless protagonist, wandering in the oblivion of oblivion. Upon coming to his senses, the protagonist realizes that he has died and that he remembers nothing of his former life. Paradise is before the eyes of the deceased, but not as it is usually portrayed in religious writings. It turns out that paradise is full of bureaucracy and is subject to a strict hierarchy: the main god, then the angels, and the lower, slave link are the neons, the neon we play, the neon White.

In paradise we are greeted by three more neons, and judging by the way they talk to Neon White, they knew each other when they were alive. The three neons, familiar from their past lives, are the secondary characters who are supposed to explain to the player what's going on.

Neons are some kind of heavenly liquidators. The goal of each neon is to cleanse heaven of demons. No magical rituals are required to kill the demons here, and the devils are killed with firearms. To somehow motivate the neons to do their dirty work, the angels have organized a competition among them, the grand prize being a year of life in a real, blissful paradise. And so that the neons do not revolt, the angels now and then remind the demon-killers of their place, and are rude and forbidden to drink alcohol. For the better safety of the angels, each neon is required to wear a mask with explosives that detonate if the neon wants to remove the mask. The caste system is in full glory...

The neon who kills the most demons in the shortest time will be awarded paradise, but only for one year. At the end of the year of bliss, the neon is obliged to become champion again, to defend the title. As is to be expected of any story in such tones, the main antagonist, Neon Green, is the multiple champion and the main competitor of White.

But White is not motivated by the prospect of lounging in paradise, he is motivated by the desire to remember the past, to find himself in the world and a strange, pangs of guilt...

...In general, the classic three-act background flashed in many such anime. In some places, the overdramatic, pathological and clichéd story must be colored by the characters, White's friends, Neon Red, Neon Yellow and Neon Lilac:

This trio is so caricatured that you can't help but feel sympathy for them. The characters are exactly what they seem to be at first glance. Whether it is a femme fatale or a yandere, the characters are vivid, albeit lopsided. Another thing is what these characters say. The dialogue here is so bad that it's even good.

The dialogues here are full of vulgarity and toilet humor, but they are not devoid of life. Despite the fact that the characters' conversations are predictable, at times the same Lilova can give out something that does not fit on your head. If you find it hard to be confused, Neon White is up to the task. Thankfully, the game understands that the tone of the piece is not entirely serious, so every now and then it makes fun of both itself and the industry as a whole.

But the story and characters of Neon White are not the reason for the game's popularity and rave reviews.

A crazy cocktail of genres

What if you build the game on the foundation of DeFRaG's Quake III Arena mod, borrow stylistics from Mirror Edge and Sonic the Blue Hedgehog games, wrap it up in a shooter wrapper, add a pinch of competitive element, and put a visual novel in between the layers of that "pie"? That would be Neon White.

It's hard to imagine how a game with so many different parts won't fall apart, but Neon White manages to keep its integrity. If someone tells you that Neon White has elements of a collectible card game and a dating simulator, don't be fooled.

Neon White is primarily about high-speed passing levels at medium speeds. The drive of the Ghostrunner is much more dynamic and requires the player to react and act lightning fast, in Neon White the character moves quite slowly, no matter how well you play, the knowledge of levels and calibrated actions are decisive. The skill refinement pays off:

Running galloping through the level is not an option. If you do not kill all the demons on the map, the result will not count, and the search for a demon lost from sight takes precious seconds. Demons aren't much of a threat, they're more of a nuisance than a real threat.

Each weapon has two types of fire: standard and alternative. And if with the standard one everything is very simple - the pistol shoots bullets, the rocket launcher shoots rockets - everything is not so obvious with the alternative one. It is an alternative mode of fire weapons adds to the Neon White grain of strategic thinking: any weapon except the katana, you can reset and activate the skill weapon. Resetting a pistol gives you a double jump; resetting a machine gun shoots a grenade into the ground, and its blast throws your character up in the air; a submachine gun, when reset, magnetizes the protagonist to the ground, and when it hits the ground it breaks down barriers and demon faces. The slight infusion of tactics did Neon White good, because every weapon thrown away can, in theory, be used in different ways. The card-weapon thing more than compensates for the game's insufficiently fast floo.

Why?

But the "dating simulator" was inorganic. I put it in quotation marks, because it's hard to call it a dating simulator. The mechanism is simple: the entire game is divided into regions. Not all regions are filled with demons, some regions are only needed for dialogue inserts:

The game is full of characters with whom you must build relationships. However, the relationship itself develops, attention, solely through gifts. After you pass the level, you will receive a reward, and on the level itself there will be a prize. This prize must be given to friends, angels, then you open a new dialogue, a bonus level, and if you pelt one of the neon with gifts, you also learn about your friend's past from a former life. If relationships were built solely on gifts, the divorce rate would not be so disappointing.

The relationship can't be spoiled by the wrong answers in the dialogues, there will be no jealous fight between Lilaya and Red for White's heart, and Yellow will always treat the player as a friend. Moreover, all these pseudo-dates never end like this, but to tease the players Angel Matrix is not ashamed:

The dating simulation here is a bit of a mess. The player is simply forced to scour the levels in search of gifts to get to know the characters better. The natural progression of the plot will leave many questions unanswered. Why it was necessary to force players to hunt for achievements is unclear.

Conclusion

If you're expecting Neon White to be a dynamic speedrun at crazy speeds, you're in the wrong place. Of all the speed games, Neon White is the most measured and calibrated, requiring not so much reaction as knowledge of the level and creative thinking.

On the other hand, Neon White is an example of leveldesign. Each level is designed so that the player notices the further path intuitively, but by turning on the imagination, gets a worthy reward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0b-qZTF0Mc